SME Server:Documentation:Developers Manual

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English  • Deutsch

Developer Documentation

This manual is aimed at developers and provides the information they require to integrate their applications into the SME Server platform. The manual discusses the key concepts of the SME Server such as the configuration database, configuration file templates and the events and actions model which differentiate the SME Server from other Linux distributions.

The Developer manual is maintained separate to this wiki, corrections and suggestions are to be made on the Bug Tracker.

View the HTML version of the Developer Manual as individual pages, or as a single page.

Also available in a pdf version

Table of Contents.
I. An overview of the SME Server
   1. About this manual
   2. Who should read this manual?
   3. What is the SME Server?
   4. Design philosophy
       Principle 1: Automating best practice
       Principle 2: Simplicity
       Principle 3: Extensibility
       Principle 4: Reliability
   5. Architecture overview
II. SME Server internals
   6. Configuration database
       Overview
       The configuration databases
       Namespace issues
   7. Actions and events
       Actions
       Events
   8. Configuration file templates
       Design of the template system
       The Text::Template module
       Template expansion
   9. Process startup, supervision and shutdown
       Process startup
       Process supervision: runit (and supervise)
   10. The server-manager web interface
       The web directory
       Web function scripts
       Common files
       Panel definitions
III. How to create an SME Server package - step by step
   11. Getting started
       Creating a development environment
   12. Getting to know how to customize the SME Server
       Exercise 1: Changing a configuration template
       Exercise 2: The magic of templates
       Exercise 3: Using events and actions
       Exercise 4: Adding new configuration database parameters
       Exercise 5: Adding a user interface screen
       Exercise 6: Adding a new event type
       Exercise 7: Thought experiment - adding a new server application
       Customization guidelines
   13. Packaging your application
       A quick introduction to RPMs
       Selecting and creating RPMs for your application
       Setting up your RPM development environment
       Building an RPM
   14. The SME Server development environment
       Configuring your development environment
       Modifying an SME Server package
       SourceForge developer CVS access
IV. Advanced customization of the SME Server
   15. Advanced customization principles
       Leveraging the provisioning system for users, groups, and i-bays
       Programmatically creating users, groups, and i-bays
       Reserving accounts to avoid conflicts with user, group, or i-bay names
       Adding new account properties
       Using the LDAP server
       Data backup
       Using the MySQL database
       Sending email messages
       Managing the firewall
       Starting up programs automatically upon system boot
V. Documentation and resources
   16. Perl modules
VI. License texts
   A. GNU Free Documentation License
   B. GNU General Public License

Documentation Links

Other sources of information

 -Managing Software with Yum - http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/docs/html/yum/
 -CentOS 4/RHEL4 Documentation - http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/docs/
 -Fedora Documentation - http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/
 -Fedora Developers Guide - http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/developers-guide/
 -Fedora Documentaion Guide - http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/documentation-guide/
 -Maximum RPM Book - http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm-snapshot/
 -Fedora RPM Guide (draft) - http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/drafts/rpm-guide-en/
 -Fedora Wiki - Building Packages Guide - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/BuildingPackagesGuide
 -Mezzanine Howto - http://beta.kainx.org/articles/6&highlight=mezz-howto - also http://lists.contribs.org/mailman/public/devinfo/msg08010.html
 -Fedoraproject.org RPM Packaging Guidelines - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingGuidelines
 -Fedoraproject.org Package Review Guidelines - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageReviewGuidelines
 -Fedoraproject.org RPM Spec File Scriptlet Snippets - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ScriptletSnippets

Translating with Pootle

SME Server supports more than a dozen languages. See http://translate.contribs.org/ for the current list.

Pootle Video Tutorial

If you want to watch a video about Pootle in action, look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6tDUQv3huU

Translators

Become a SME Translator

1. Before you can request have access and be assigned responsible for one or more languages you will need to register at http://translate.contribs.org.
2. After registering you will have to log in and add the language and projects to your account in Pootle. This can be done by choosing the Change options under the My Account.
3. Now select the three projects SME Server Console, SME Server Panels, and SME Contribs Panels under My Projects (Hold the Ctrl key while clicking the desired options to select multiple options).
4. Last thing that you need to do is to select your language under My Languages. You are now subscribed to all required projects for the desired languages.

	Note:
	Please, do not request to be responsible translator for a certain language before having completed the above steps.



5. To become responsible for the language you desire you need to request responsibility by creating a

   new bug

   , please provide your Pootle username as well as the language you want to be responsible for.

Language Translators

Language	Responsibles (Pootle username)
Bulgarian	stefangk
Chinese	gfengyoung
Danish	koopmann - p1ur - skovsgaard
Dutch	Cactus - Marco Hess - jester - skydivers
French	jpl - mmccarn - esibert - GrandPa - dadoudidon - Cool34000 - unnilennium - dani
German	Reinhold - ente - koopmann
Greek	MAuVE - pfloor
Hungarian	tacsaby
Indonesion	thomasch
Italian	matprova - nicolatiana - Fumetto - nenonano - filippoc
Japanese	misnerspace - sreejith - pranathi - yuka
Norwegian	terje
Portuguese	nrgomes
Portuguese (Brazil)	jader
Russian	Nikolay?
Slovenian	bpivk
Spanish	Normando - juanidada - oscartenerife - Calimenio
Swedish	chrille
Thai	Thirawoot
Turkish	sami

Pootle tips

To speed up your translation process follow these tips:

Interface Customization

Enter at My account and then at Change options.

Set these values:

• Number of rows in translate mode = 1
• Number of rows in view mode = 5
• Input Height (in lines) = 10

You can select your language and projects to see shortcuts at your home page.

Untranslated words

First login at Pootle, then click Show Editing Functions and finally at Quick Translate for each file or whole language.

Also you can see the suggestions clicking at Review Suggestions.

Translation Memory

You can use the matching translations from the Pootle right side related strings to speed up the translation process. Make the necessary fixes for the non matching strings.

Checks before finish your work

We generate daily a consistency verification,it´s available on http://translate.contribs.org/errors/

Please run these checks before conclude your work:

Under the language of your choice at root level project, click at Show Editing Functions and then Show Checks to see a list of syntax errors.

See http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/guide/pofilter_examples and http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/guide/translation/commonerrors

It is clear that certain syntax errors will always be due to differences in languages. For example a question in English carries only the symbol of closure (?) while in Spanish also carries the opening (¿).

	Note:
	We need to make consistent translations. The system detect some consistence errors for all languages. You can check http://translate.contribs.org/errors/ and see your language errors. Please fix the inconsistency errors

Example for Italian:

#: root/etc/e-smith/locale/en-us/etc/e-smith/web/functions/clamav:60(trans)
#: root/etc/e-smith/locale/en-us/etc/e-smith/web/functions/emailsettings:118(trans)
#, fuzzy
msgid "During office hours (8:00 AM to 6:00 PM) on weekdays"
msgstr ""
"#-#-#-#-#  clamav.po (SME Panels)  #-#-#-#-#\n"
"Durante l'orario d'ufficio (dalle 8:00 alle 18:00) giorni lavorativi\n"
"#-#-#-#-#  emailsettings.po (SME Panels)  #-#-#-#-#\n"
"Orario ufficio (8:00-18:00 Lun-Ven)"

You must fix the file clamav.po or emailsettings.po (not both) to only use one of the following translated values:

Durante l'orario d'ufficio (dalle 8:00 alle 18:00) giorni lavorativi 

or

Orario ufficio (8:00-18:00 Lun-Ven)

Please ensure to remove all \n characters from end of translation and escape characters \ before each " not present in english source language. ex. \"{$acct}\" should be "{$acct}". This only happens in the consistence checks.

So, at equal English strings values => equal translations (Italian) values.

In this example (Italian) the files clamav.po and emailsettings.po should have the same translated value:

Durante l'orario d'ufficio (dalle 8:00 alle 18:00) giorni lavorativi or Orario ufficio (8:00-18:00 Lun-Ven).

Considerations

• Do not use colloquial terms. Only formal XXX-LANG.
• Please DON'T use automatic nor machine generated translations. These are BAD quality. Leave human translators them make its work!
• Review the orthographic errors. A very simple way is to use Firefox with the installed XXX-LANG dictionary.
• Verify the translation in the context.
• Not to be brief words. Ej. "Ud." instead of "Usted" (Spanish example)
• The subscripts "_" in Pootle indicate a space in target.
• Not to add capital letters in where in English they are not it. Ej. "Web page" must be translated like "Página web" and not like "Página Web" (Spanish example). The intention is to translate and not to invent. For it we must be exact although it demands much greater time the translation.
• Any discussion or doubts or interchange of ideas can be made at the tab "discussion" in the top part of this page. Indent the answers adding two points at the beginning of each new line.
• IMPORTANT. If at the moment of an installation or modification of the adjustments of SME Server it detects an inexact translation or that one does not adjust to the context, please, takes note precise from the same one and in where it found it, soon to correct it. If you want you can fix at http://translate.contribs.org. Does not let save the opportunity to correct.

Changing the Server Language

Server-Manager

Change the language the panel is in by changing your browser default language

For Firefox currently it is: Preferences, content, Languages.

Console

For Centos 6 i.e. SME9, and older versions

Edit the first two lines in /etc/sysconfig/i18n

#nano -w /etc/sysconfig/i18n
LANG="en_US"
SUPPORTED="en_US:en"  (maybe not needed, doesn't exist by default)

issue a db command

config setprop sysconfig Language sv_SE

For CentOS 7 and SME 10

List available keymaps starting with 'us' :

#localectl list-keymaps | grep ^us

To permanently change the keymap on CentOS 7 to e.g. the US keymap run the localectl command:

#localectl set-keymap us

To confirm your permanent keymap settings execute the localectl command without any arguments.

Source: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-change-system-keyboard-keymap-layout-on-centos-7-linux

Choose a Language (and Keytable see below) from the list

(-) in front of the line means SME doesn't have any translation for that language

 Bulgarian	bg	latarcyrheb-sun16	bg_BG.UTF-8	bg	Europe/Sofia
-Catalan	ca	latarcyrheb-sun16	ca_ES.UTF-8	es	Europe/Madrid
 Chinese(Simplified)	zh_CN	none	        zh_CN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Shanghai
-Chinese(Traditional)	zh_TW	none	        zh_TW.UTF-8	us	Asia/Taipei
-Croatian	hr	latarcyrheb-sun16	hr_HR.UTF-8	croat	Europe/Zagreb
-Czech	        cs	latarcyrheb-sun16	cs_CZ.UTF-8	cz-lat2	Europe/Prague
 Danish        da	latarcyrheb-sun16	da_DK.UTF-8	dk	Europe/Copenhagen
 Dutch	        nl	latarcyrheb-sun16	nl_NL.UTF-8	nl	Europe/Amsterdam
 English	en	latarcyrheb-sun16	en_US.UTF-8	us	America/New_York
 Estonian	et	latarcyrheb-sun16	et_EE.UTF-8	et	Europe/Tallinn
-Finnish	fi	latarcyrheb-sun16	fi_FI.UTF-8	fi	Europe/Helsinki
 French        fr	latarcyrheb-sun16	fr_FR.UTF-8	fr-latin1  Europe/Paris
 German        de	latarcyrheb-sun16	de_DE.UTF-8	de-latin1-nodeadkeys  Europe/Berlin
 Greek	        el	iso07u-16	        el_GR.UTF-8	gr	Europe/Athens
-Gujarati	gu	none	                gu_IN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Calcutta
-Hindi	        hi	none	                hi_IN.UTF-8	us    	Asia/Calcutta
 Hungarian	hu	latarcyrheb-sun16	hu_HU.UTF-8	hu	Europe/Budapest
-Icelandic	is	latarcyrheb-sun16	is_IS.UTF-8	is-latin1  Atlantic/Reykjavik
 Indonesian	id	latarcryheb-sun16	id_ID.UTF-8	us	Asia/Jakarta
 Italian	it	latarcyrheb-sun16	it_IT.UTF-8	it	Europe/Rome
 Japanese	ja	none	                ja_JP.UTF-8	jp106	Asia/Tokyo	
-Kannada	kn	none	                kn_IN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Calcutta
-Korean        ko	none	                ko_KR.UTF-8	us	Asia/Seoul	
-Macedonian	mk	latarcyrheb-sun16	mk_MK.UTF-8	mk	Europe/Skopje
-Malay         ms	latarcyrheb-sun16	ms_MY.UTF-8	us	Asia/Kuala_Lumpur
-Malayalam     ml	none	                ml_IN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Calcutta
-Marathi	mr	none	                mr_IN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Calcutta
 Norwegian	nb	latarcyrheb-sun16	nb_NO.UTF-8	no	Europe/Oslo
-Northern Sotho nso	latarcyrheb-sun16	nso_ZA.UTF-8	us	Africa/Johannesburg
-Oriya	        or	none	                or_IN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Calcutta
 Polish        pl	latarcyrheb-sun16	pl_PL.UTF-8	pl2	Europe/Warsaw
 Portuguese	pt	latarcyrheb-sun16	pt_PT.UTF-8	pt-latin1  Europe/Lisbon
 Portuguese(Brazilian)	pt_BR latarcyrheb-sun16	pt_BR.UTF-8	br-abnt2  America/Sao_Paulo
-Punjabi	pa	none	                pa_IN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Calcutta
 Russian	ru	latarcyrheb-sun16	ru_RU.UTF-8	ru	Europe/Moscow
-Serbian	sr	latarcyrheb-sun16	sr_CS.UTF-8	sr-cy	Europe/Belgrade
-Serbian(Latin) sr@Latn latarcyrheb-sun16	sr_CS.UTF-8@Latn sr-cy	Europe/Belgrade
-Sinhala	si	none	                si_LK.UTF-8	us	Asia/Colombo
-Slovak	sk	latarcyrheb-sun16	sk_SK.UTF-8	sk-qwerty Europe/Bratislava
 Slovenian     sl      latarcyrheb-sun16	sl_SI.UTF-8	slovene	Europe/Ljubljana
 Spanish	es	latarcyrheb-sun16	es_ES.UTF-8	es	Europe/Madrid
 Swedish	sv	latarcyrheb-sun16	sv_SE.UTF-8	sv-latin1 Europe/Stockholm
-Tamil	        ta	none	                ta_IN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Calcutta
-Telugu        te	none	                te_IN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Calcutta
 Turkish	tr	latarcyrheb-sun16	tr_TR.UTF-8	trq	Europe/Istanbul
-Ukrainian	uk	latarcyrheb-sun16	uk_UA.UTF-8	ua-utf	Europe/Kiev
-Vietnamese	vi	latarcyrheb-sun16	vi_VN.UTF-8	us	Asia/Saigon
-Welsh	        cy	latarcyrheb-sun16	cy_GB.UTF-8	uk	Europe/London
-Zulu	        zu	latarcyrheb-sun16	zu_ZA.UTF-8	us	Africa/Johannesburg

Keyboard

Issue a db command

config setprop sysconfig Keytable sv

The above command, and editing /etc/sysconfig/i18n doesn't completely fix the keyboard.

Pootle for Developers

Lexicons for rpms in smecontribs and smeserver are automatically added to Pootle.

A patch is automatically created at http://translate.contribs.org/patches/ You then apply this to the rpm to add the new translations or update the existing ones.

We need a few volunteers to apply these patches to smecontribs, say weekly, or more or less as the need arises, it isn't difficult and we will guide you.

Language rpms for the base rpms are generated less frequently. If you would like to check your translating work you can apply the daily patch to the smeserver-locale .src.rpm to create your own rpm. Everyone has read access to smeserver cvs and you would basically follow the instructions at Package_Modification, ask if you need help.

• The English locale file is used as the Pootle template. Other languages are edited/translated at Pootle.

• Every time you modify, add to or remove strings from the English locale file, just re-commit to cvs. There is a daily update to apply cvs changes to Pootle

• Make your original FM file XML strict. Always close the opened tags (<i>...</i>). Use the same caps for tags (<b> is not equal to <B>).

• Review the General lexicon, you don't need to duplicate these entries in your contrib lexicon